Isaiah 36:1-10, 18-20; 37:8-29, "What Makes You So Confident?"
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We can be confident and still be very wrong. That can be insignificant, like when you get lost because you were confident a destination is in one place when it’s in another and you didn’t check your directions. Or it can be more serious, like being confident you turned the power off to a circuit you’re rewiring.
Our world today is testing our confidence. Where does your confidence rest? Some of the things that gave us confidence three years ago have let us down. Most of us are shaped by the message of our culture that you can only depend on yourself. So work hard at self-confidence. What if self-confidence is a deception? There could be serious, even eternal consequences.
Today’s passage offers us a test for our confidence. Does our confidence rest in the right object? We see two kings facing a test of confidence. One is very self-confident, and doesn’t even know he’s failing the test. The other is not very confident at all, but what little confidence he has, he rests on God, and God proves Himself worthy of that. But it isn’t a religious morality tale. It’s an historical event that Isaiah recorded for the ages, and it is a test for all of us. Where does your confidence rest? The end of this event leaves us with a clear answer. If your confidence rests in your self, God will humble you. But if your confidence rests in God, even if it is shaky, you will find strength for the challenges of this life, and find wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
These chapters of Isaiah are unique because they ground the message of Isaiah’s prophecies in a significant historical event of his day. The Assyrian Empire was in the process of conquering and carrying off into exile the ten northern tribes of Israel. Now they have come to the southern tribes, and are threatening to take Jerusalem itself, the capital of Judah, but also the city they claimed God dwelt.
The chapters that come before this are Isaiah’s prophecies to Israel that God is in control of every human event. Their own sin will bring consequences in the form of war and exile. But God controls the empires that wage that war, so you will be secure if you rest your confidence in Him.
Chapters 36-39 ground that prophetic message in an historical event, but they serve two other purposes in Isaiah’s text. One is a shift of focus from Assyria to Babylon as the main enemy antagonist. If the people of Judah were afraid of Assyria’s power, they had another thing coming. That thing was the Babylonian Empire. Babylon is on the rise, and within one hundred years, Assyria itself will be conquered and forgotten. We live a Babylon world after all, as we saw a few weeks ago.
The other shift will be from a focus on the faithlessness of Israel and Judah to a focus on the Messiah, the person Isaiah calls the servant of the LORD, who will save and restore the remnant of the faithful to the kingdom of God.
In the meantime, we face this question, and the death of the Queen of England this week is a timely reminder - with the swift and varied changes in our world, what makes you so confident that you will make it? If Isaiah is right, God is in charge of all these changes, and is powerfully working in the heavens to move events on earth toward His purposes, and we should learn to trust Him. If our culture is right, our world is chaotic and you can only trust yourself. But behind our culture is a spiritual that appeals to our corrupt natures to be self-focused, self-protective, self-promoting, and self-absorbed. The idol of self will consume you. So, self-confidence is a deceptive illusion.
Look at how the message of our culture comes through the words of Sennacherib in our passage. Sennacherib has sent his spokesman, the Rabshakeh, to demand a surrender from Hezekiah and the kingdom of Judah. Rabshakeh is probably not a name. It’s a title of some position in the Assyrian government or military. He is a mouthpiece for Sennacherib, the current king of Assyria.
They challenge the confidence Hezekiah and Judah have in God, and I hope we are challenged as we think about these today.
The overall question Sennacherib asks through the Rabshakeh is a good one...
And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours?
These words might have been spoken by a tyrannical emperor to people 2700 years ago, but they are a really good question for all of us. On what does your confidence rest? Is it a stable foundation?
The first challenge Sennacherib makes is Judah’s confidence in their wisdom. We know from other sources, and Sennacherib, through the Rabshakeh, alludes to it here, that Hezekiah and Judah had put at least some of their confidence in the power of Egypt. This is worldly wisdom. They would protect themselves from one world empire by making an alliance with another world empire. Fight fire with fire. This is how many people live their lives today. Make alliances because the world is a dangerous place.
Sennacherib points out in verse 5 that an alliance with another person or power is nothing more than words spoken between people. And talk is cheap.
Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?
The next challenge is to their own faithfulness to God. This challenge is diabolical. For those that say, “I don’t trust in Egypt, I trust in the LORD (Yaheweh, the Ever-living One) our God”, Sennacherib points out that Hezekiah tore down altars built to the LORD on high mountains.
But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”?
Sennacherib mistakes Hezekiah’s religious reforms that restored pure worship in the Jerusalem temple for a lack of faith in God, but all he really needs to do is plant a seed of doubt in their mind. This happens for us too. Is my faith real? Do I really trust God like I claim to do? Am I a fraud? Have I done something to offend God so bad that He won’t forgive me?
And it’s that diabolical train of thought that leads to the big daddy of challenges for any of us. It’s one thing to question my own faith in God. I know it’s shaky at best sometimes. But the real question is, despite that, does God love me? Does He notice me? Does He care? Is He on my side?
Sennacherib plants this evil thought in the minds of God’s people. He says in verse 10,
Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.” ’ ”
And the best attacks of our confidence or our faith are based in the truth. In this case, the Lord had spoken already, as we saw in Isaiah 10, that He would use Assyria to destroy the land. Sennacherib takes this to mean that Yahweh, the Ever-living God, has rejected His people. He doesn’t love them anymore. And Sennacherib is ready to make a deal. He’ll take care of them if they make peace.
But he has made a big mistake. He has mistaken God’s punishment of Israel and Judah as an abandonment of His people. Nothing could be further from the truth. A good father punishes the children that he loves when they are in danger of making disastrous choices.
But the truth is, all of us are faced with this test of confidence at some point. Does God really love me? When the sun is shining, and I have plenty to eat, and people seem to like me, it’s not hard to believe. And it gives me confidence to think that God loves and cares. But when the challenges come, the flood of doubt comes right behind it.
God has done something to help us in times like this. He has demonstrated His love in such a convincing way, He has left no doubt that He loves you and wants you to rest your soul in His love in ways that give you strength. But before we get to that, we need to look at one more challenge Sennacherib brings.
He questions God’s power to save.
Isaiah 36:18–20 (ESV)
Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’ ”
Sennacherib is the ultimate cynic. We are surrounded by cynics today. They have everything figured out. Religion is like politics or business. Everybody has an angle, has something to sell, and they’re all blowing smoke. No one loves you like you love yourself. The smartest, the most powerful, and the best networked people succeed. So just have more self-confidence, and get out there and take what’s yours.
What cynics miss is that religion is just a poor substitute for a relationship with the Ever-living God. And God is not like every other institution out there. He doesn’t play angles, He has nothing to sell, and He doesn’t blow smoke. He needs nothing from you, He loves you just as you are, and not because you’re the smartest, the strongest, or the best. He loves you because He made you and He knows you like no one else, and He can satisfy you like no one and nothing in this world every can.
The end of the story for Sennacherib goes like this. He has to end his siege of Jerusalem because of the threat from Egypt. But he sends one final threatening letter through the Rabshakeh. Hezekiah does something really healthy. He brings this letter filled with all the cynical and fear-inducing threats from the world’s most powerful king to God. And he fills his mind with who God is and he fills his prayer with an honest confession of dependence. He has lost all confidence in himself, and he’s ready to put all his confidence in God.
Fill your mind with these truths about God.
Isaiah 37:15–20 (ESV)
And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.
Then confess your need honestly before God.
Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.
Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire.
But then fill your prayer with truth from scripture.
For they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed.
So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.”
The answer to Hezekiah’s prayer comes through Isaiah in 37:22-29, and we could summarize it this way, “Sennacherib has no idea who he’s messing with. My children have everything to be confident about because I’m on their side. I’m tired of your arrogant, mocking, self-confidence. And it ends this way.
Isaiah 37:28–29 (ESV)
“ ‘I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me
and your complacency has come to my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,
and I will turn you back on the way
by which you came.’
God knows, He hears, He sees, He cares, and He will act on behalf of His people. The end of the story is that after this, the Assyrian army is destroyed, Sennacherib returns home and is murdered by his two sons, and Babylon begins to rise. The lesson from Isaiah is, God humbles the self-confident, and He upholds those who put their confidence in Him.
But the end of Sennacherib’s story is not the end for us. All of Sennacherib’s challenges are the challenges we face. We are tempted to gain more self confidence through becoming better educated, smarter people. We are tempted to power up in challenging circumstances. Maybe you have a bully like Sennacherib breathing threats against you at school or at work. We are tempted to make alliances and network and get better connected.
But God has done everything necessary to demonstrate His love for us...
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God loves us in our sins, in our weakness, in our failures, in our faithlessness, and has sent Jesus to die for us in that state to prove there is nothing you could do to make Him love you more or love you less. So we have peace with God, we have every reason to hope, and we don’t need to fight our battles with the weapons of this world.
What makes you confident?
1 Corinthians 1:26–31 (ESV)
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”